Connecting minorities with science jobs at UMES

• The University of Maryland Eastern Shore is hosting a science education forum this week.
• The collaboration with NOAA is aimed at steering minority students into science and engineering.
• The program's administrators admit they know little about whether those students go into that work.

Together, they account for 26 percent of the available workforce in America.

But African-Americans, Hispanics, American Indians and Alaska Natives represent just 10 percent of the workers in science and engineering fields, according to federal estimates.

A collaboration between a federal agency and a Lower Shore university is trying to narrow that racial and ethnic divide.

The University of Maryland Eastern Shore is hosting a science education forum this week that is the keystone in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's efforts to engage minority students.

The four-day conference, which kicked off Sunday, is expected to draw 400 college students, community leaders and nationally recognized researchers to the Princess Anne campus. It takes place every two years at one of the NOAA program's partner institutions.

If they join the 81 program graduates who have gone on to work for NOAA, "we get people who are already familiar with our work," NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan said at a news conference Monday at UMES. "We know them. They know us. And they're extremely well-prepared."

The NOAA Educational Partnership Program with Minority-Serving Institutions represents a $14 million slice of the $3 billion that the federal government spends each year on promoting science, technology, engineering and math (or STEM) education.

NOAA itself is one of the federal government's leading producers of scientific research, studying everything from weather patterns to fish populations.

UMES is one of four lead academic centers involved in the program, which was established in 2001.

Under the program, UMES and the other schools collaborate with NOAA labs on research programs. It also offers paid agency internships, scholarships and training in environmental entrepreneurship.

As of September, 1,600 of the program's students had graduated with a STEM-related degree. What they did with those degrees, however, was less clear.

NOAA historically has only tracked graduates for a short while after they obtained their degrees, and participation in the surveys is voluntary.

Of the 800 or so who responded over the years, 24 percent went on to work for private, STEM-related businesses, and another 10 percent were hired by NOAA, according to the agency.

Sullivan said her staff is working on beefing up tracking to produce a clearer picture of where students land. A STEM education benefits society regardless of whether students end up in those fields, she added.

Laura Almodóvar-Acevedo is a second-year doctoral student in marine ecology at UMES. She has interned for the past two summers at NOAA's lab in Oxford, Maryland, and talks at least once a month to a NOAA adviser about her research into black sea bass in the Chesapeake Bay.

"I get to see the kind of scientific operation that goes on," she said. "This cooperation with NOAA is really valuable for us students."

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NOAA academic centers

• University of Maryland Eastern Shore: NOAA Living Marine Resources Cooperative Science Center

• Howard University: NOAA Center for Atmospheric Sciences

• Florida A&M University: NOAA Environmental Cooperative Science Center

• The City Collegeof New York: NOAA Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center

To watch a video of the science education conference, visit DelmarvaNow.com.